In an instant he remembered: the fortune-teller. He’d searched his pocket for a quarter to pay her and set his notebook on the table. Then forgot it just minutes later.

He swore again, more irritated now than genuinely upset. Surely she would have held on to it. Though if she happened to look inside, God knows what she’d make of his scribbled notes. He’d go back first thing tomorrow, drop by to see if Max was around to buy another few cigarettes. Make a few sketches of Hell Gate. Maybe he could even go inside, if they’d opened it again.

He sank into his desk chair and stared at his typewriter, feeling a frisson of mingled fear, desire, expectation: the emotion he experienced writing or reading a tale of forbidden things, walking after dark along the Manhattan docks or sitting in a dim Bowery saloon where men gathered to meet others with the same furtive thoughts. The world held a secret—many secrets—and he didn’t need a notebook to uncover them.

Flushed with excitement, he thought of the tunnel beneath Hell Gate, the mysteries it held that he might re-create on the page. He rolled a fresh sheet of paper into his Royal Upright, and began to type.

Chapter 54

Chapter 54

THE BARN WAS tucked into a weed-grown yard behind the house, surrounded by old elms. Henry lifted the latch and pulled the heavy door back, revealing a single long room cloaked in shadow. He stepped over the threshold and was immediately swallowed by the darkness. Pin hesitated, then went in after him.

The barn smelled of dirt and neat’s-foot oil, chicken shit, and straw. After a few seconds her eyes began to adjust, and the outlines of unknown objects gradually became recognizable. A scythe, hoes and rakes and shovels, a wheelbarrow. A hay rake, twice as long as she was tall, hung from the rafters like a huge many-taloned claw. Sawhorses had been pushed against one wall, along with a wire frame that contained a small chicken coop.

Pin knelt in front of the coop and peered inside. She heard soft inquisitive clucks as the hens stirred in the straw where they slept. She poked a finger through the chicken wire, trying to touch their fluffed-up feathers.

“Here’s a rabbit,” Henry called.

She stood and joined him in front of a hutch. A large grey rabbit lay pressed against the front of the wire cage, hind legs outstretched like one of the leaping targets in the shooting gallery. Henry slipped his fingers through the wire and stroked its fur. Pin stared at it with longing and trepidation. “Will it bite me?”

Henry shook his head. She warily slid a finger through a gap in the chicken wire and touched the rabbit’s long ear, feeling it quiver beneath her touch. She stroked it gently, the velvety fur softer than anything she could have imagined. “Can I let it out?” she asked.